I've had a lot of luck with the following list:

ISD2

Motti

ECM

ISD 2

ECM

XI-7 turbolasers

Wing Commander

Avenger

Firespray

Firespray

Firespray

Mauler Mithel

Rhymer

Dengar

I like these upgrades, and they've done really well for me. But my question is, should the XI-7 be on the avenger, or on Motti to make him dangerous as well?

The idea of course is to use wing commander to send the bombers in, and the enemy either spends their defense tokens and has them unavailable for when avenger shoots, or they let the bombers put their damage wherever they like and avenger has a free ride anyway. But perhaps Motti should be the one using the wing commander and XI-7 to dish damage before his shots that can't be ignored, forcing them to use tokens, and then the mostly naked avenger capitalizes on it?

Pro tip: Drop everything and fly naked. Drop the Fireball as well.

It's better to have a generous initiative bid.

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I can confirm that this list works well. I think keeping Avenger as the damage dealer works and let's you keep Motti back in reserve/support.

I would put the wing commander on whichever ship you wont be spamming squadron commands on anyway. As for XI7's, there are merits to bith approaches. But ai like it on Avenger because thats the one you want to be delivering the munch. You can wing commander into squads, force some token usage, and then go to town, or if your squads get out of range or engaged you still have xi7's pushing damage through.

Im a little sad theres no gunnery team on either one.

I've found gunnery team to be useful only against corvette swarms. Otherwise, I rarely ever seem to have multiple enemy ships in my front arc.

Plus, in this day and age, it really seems like unless I'm focusing both ISD's on a single ship, it never dies anyway, so those ancillary one-off shots I get on the occasional second ship in my front arc can never really get backed up by another ISD. I feel like most of my games are won by killing one or two enemy ships and staying alive, rather than going for the massacre.